The present invention relates to massage devices and has specific reference to an improved device of this character.
The efficiency of massage as a therapeutic and hygienic method has been known since very ancient times. In China and India massage was current practice about four thousand years ago, and constituted an essential accessory with the Greeks and Romans. Of course, at first massage was performed in a completely empirical form and came into use in medical practice only during the nineteenth century.
Massage is based on physiological laws. Thus, a massage performed on a metameric area may attenuate or even eliminate the pain emanating from the underlying or internal organ. The cutaneous vasomotor disturbations caused by the massage facilitate the subjacent circulation. Massage may also facilitate the resorption of interposition liquids. Finally, massage prepares muscles for a subsequent activity by drawing a larger amount of blood into and heating, the muscles, whereas a massage applied after the strain of physical efforts will relax the musculature and restore its flexibility.
Many diseases and disorders can be treated with an appropriate massage. This applies notably to cellulitis, sequellae of fractures, sprains, luxations, hydarthrosis, arthritis. The main forms of massage manipulation technique are light touch, scalp massage, rubbing, pressure, kneading, pinching, vibration and percussion.
The massage performed by human hands is by far more efficient than the massage accomplished with an apparatus. Besides, a massager driven as a rule by an electric device can be used only for one and sometimes two different manipulations. Most massagers, usually of the vibrator or vibro-massager type, are simply apparatus intended for applying vibration to the human body. Other devices have been proposed in the art which reproduce other types of manipulations but not the pinching effect. Now the manipulations effected by the hands of a masseur are seldom of a single type, they are mostly compound manipulations, an effect hitherto not obtained by any of the many massagers proposed up to now.